


Balance

by jessicaciao



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicaciao/pseuds/jessicaciao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everywhere she walked, it was life and Spring. When Persephone decided it was time for her to take a husband, she looked around and saw that the gods of Olympus hadn’t the respect for the life she brought in order to deserve her attention. A king of the Underworld, however, seemed strangely like the perfect fit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balance

 

At a gathering in the great hall of Mount Olympus, Persephone smiled sweetly up at the Lord of the Underworld and offered a plate of succulent fruits and vegetables. “From my personal garden,” she said, pointing out the varieties by name with pride.

Hades waved it away with a sad expression. “Thank you, my lady, but I will decline. Your fruit cannot compare with that of my palace’s.”

The Spring gave him a sweet and dangerous smile. “Think you that my reach doesn’t extend to your kingdom? Everything that grows obeys me and my mother. I command the birth, and she the growth and harvest. Please, my lord, try one of the fruits. Perhaps an apple, or try the pomegranate’s seeds?” To add to the temptation, she split the latter fruit open and tasted the seeds herself, pleased with her handiwork.

The stoic, black-robed lord stared past her, surveying the revelry with a sober expression. Setting her platter on a nearby table and continuing to munch on pomegranate seeds, Persephone sighed, “It must be very lonely for you in your kingdom, my lord. Especially since it was not of your choosing. All the dead around you, and you so powerful and alive yourself.”

“You know that I am not the god of death,” he said, not once looking at her. “I just keep the Underworld. No one enters who shouldn’t, and all who belong do not leave.”

“And yet there is no one to help you,” she sighed, offering again half of the pomegranate. “I promise, my lord, it is quite good.”

He wavered and finally accepted the fruit with a gracious nod. Eating some of the seeds, he smiled and said, “As suspected, delicious. But you already knew this.”

She smiled and bowed her head as she retreated, taking the platter with her.

 

Upon awaking, Hades found himself in a brightly-lit space. Dionysus’s vintage had been particularly strong this year, but nothing that should have had him forgetting hours or thinking that his palace on the edge of the Asphodel Fields was brighter than it really was. Then, he heard birdsong, and he was filled with suspicion and dread. Dashing to the unfamiliar window, he looked up into the clear sky and saw Apollo’s chariot, and he knew. Dionysus’s wine was not wholly to blame. The building he was in was just a small shack, and bursting out of the door, he was met with an orchard full of heavy-fruited trees, and beyond were fields and fields of corn and grains. Not at all his home. Had he even made it there?

A lithe figure with a basket on her hip made her way up through the fields, and he squinted in the bright light. So much brighter up here than at home. The others thought he didn’t visit because of antisocial tendencies, but in reality, he didn’t like the brightness of the Sun after so long in the Underworld’s half-light. Even though he was now partially blind, he recognized the full figure and her voice, “Awake, then, my lord? Come taste today’s gatherings.”

“My lady, why am I here?” he demanded, trying to shield his eyes from Apollo’s radiance. The Sun god was intent on his path and saw nothing of the drama unfolding below. “I should be in the Underworld. I keep a delicate balance. I must keep it!”

Persephone drew close and offered an apple, which he refused in panic. She shrugged, not at all offended, and replied, “None of the Olympians respect the life I bring, and yet I want a husband.”

“And you mean to make me that man?” he asked. “My lady, think of what you are doing! Without me to keep rule, the souls of the dead will wash over the earth, by themselves or led by those alive! You must know what that means.”

“You don’t trust your lieutenants to keep the peace while you are away? Pardon me, my lord, but if you were so needed, you would never make it to Mount Olympus. Your men clearly have everything in hand. Look,” she gestured to her fields. “No dead souls.”

“Not yet.”

She smiled. “My concern is of those alive, and now of you. Pray make yourself comfortable, my husband. You even have a garden of properly somber plants, so the area was not too bright.” She pointed to the sharp, white petals of the asphodel plants guarding the shack’s doorway. “I shall return soon.”

Hades was left to either contemplate his situation or attempt to flee. Choosing the latter course of action, he fought his way through stalks and stalks until finding himself abruptly pulled up short right on the field’s edge. He pulled desperately at the invisible fence, and then attempted to transport himself to the Styx’s edge, but no such luck. He remained planted at the edge of the cornfield, and he heaved a monstrous sigh. Somehow, the bright little Spring goddess had managed to bind him, and it didn’t take long before he realized that her seeming altruistic gift of pomegranate seeds the night before were likely the product of long planning.

It was with heavy tread that he returned to the hut to await her return. When she did, bearing baskets of fresh-picked corn in her suntanned arms, he begged her to free him, and she shook her head, leading the way inside. “Even if I wanted to, my husband, I could not. The fruit you ate will not let you. You are bound to me.” She stroked the side of his face with a sad expression. “I am sorry it must be this way. Please learn to love me.”

Every day, the same situation repeated. Persephone would leave to wander through the world, bringing bright life with her wherever she walked, and Hades would make his way to a different end of his prison, each time stymied by the fruit’s grasp. Every night, she returned and asked forgiveness, and tended the fading garden of asphodel outside of the door. He took it in turns to threaten, bargain, and finally beg for his freedom, but each time, she shook her head. “I cannot, my husband,” she would reply.

With the Lord of the Underworld gone so long, the doors between the Underworld and the earth were unattended; guards no longer feared their king’s wrath as he was nowhere in Tartarus to be found, and spirits leaked back into the world, causing panic and grief and, in some cases, violent death as long-assumed-dead family members returned to their sons and daughters, trying to live their life where they left off.

Zeus took notice on the dead walking the earth and sent god after god to try to reason with Persephone, but each time, she shook her head and said, “He won’t leave. It is not in my hands.”

“Lady of Spring,” each said, “the dead walk with the living. Surely you see that death and life cannot exist together?”

“I am only concerned with life,” she would reply. “As far as I can see, the world is only full of life.”

Hades could hear each of these conversations from inside the shack, and he grew thoughtful. When Persephone came home, he drew her into his arms and said, “You have been very kind to me, apart from keeping me here away from my kingdom. But surely you can see that the world is not, in fact, full of life. I need to keep the balance.”

She laid her head against his chest and sighed, “If you leave, I will have lost much. I have enjoyed having you here with me.”

“I know.” He stroked her bright hair and kissed her forehead. Despite his captivity, the sunlight no longer pained his eyes, and he felt some regret at having to leave her. “Come with me. You have held me this long; it is only fair I have you.”

She smiled up at him and shook her head. “Then nothing will grow.”

At that moment, the ground shook and split to announce the arrival of Zeus himself, with Hera and Demeter following sternly behind. “Persephone, goddess of Spring and growth,” Zeus rumbled, bowing low and kissing the ends of the shaft of wheat Persephone kept tucked in her belt. “I come to plead for my brother’s release. Spirits are escaping the Underworld. A balance has been upset, and if it continues, the world may well end in madness and grief. Those who die never leave their beds and homes. The violent dead returned to torment the living, ending the peace of those who thought that Death had released them.”

“Please, my daughter,” Demeter pleaded, her head veiled and her eyes full of grief. “Without Hades to watch the Underworld, our world will become meaningless. What is birth and life without death to make it precious?”

Persephone frowned, holding her basket close. “I cannot let him leave, even though I see the truth of your words,” she replied. “He had eaten three seeds of the fruit of my garden and lived in my bed for three months.”

“Is this true?” asked Hera, her sharp eyes cutting to the Lord of the Dead.

He nodded, declining to mention that the bed was in fact a large stretch of moss that he curled up on the edge of. He also failed to mention that it was as comfortable as his own bed in his chambers.

Hera placed a silencing hand on her sister’s arm and declared, “If you have laid with her for three months, you are in truth her husband, and the union cannot be broken or taken lightly.” She added the last bit with a severe glance at her husband, who was distracted by the waving branches of a willow nymph. “Yet Hades cannot abandon his duties. I say he spend part of the year with Persephone, and she part of the year with him. Three months here with Persephone, for each seed eaten. Persephone must also spend three months in the Underworld away from the earth, for her actions have caused much grief, having allowed the dead to walk the world again.”

Hades agreed readily, anticipating with dread the situation he was returning to in the Underworld, and with a heavy nod, Persephone agreed, as well. Zeus dashed a lightning bolt into the ground, splitting the earth all the way to the Underworld and flattening the previously healthy fields of corn and wheat. Hades prepared to descend as Persephone ran to her mother, who held her tightly and then pushed her away. “You have kept him here against his will,” she said. “Now you must do the same. It is only three months away from the world.”

So, at the end of every harvest, Demeter and Persephone say goodbyes as Hades rises to take his bride to the Underworld, signalling the beginning of winter. At the end of the season, he rises with her to greet the beginning of the new harvest, eventually adding his guiding and steadying hand to the growth of the world so it would not overrun and choke itself to death on its own eagerness to live.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by tumblr users hawk-and-handsaw, heartslogos, lectorel, justnuts, and democracyandassassination for sowing the seeds of this humble little work. Not as humorous as they may have thought, but it strikes me that, with Persephone in the position of captor, the story goes from semi-romantic to creepy. As vague as I tried to be with the circumstances of Hades's captivity, it still seemed squeamish. But I said I'd write, and here it is.


End file.
